Dorothea Lange

I am also looking at the work of Dorothea Lange in relation to her depression era photography, she also worked for the FSA.

Photographers

I have been looking at depression era photographers that I could use as inspiration for this project and I am really loving Russel Lee's work for the FSA during the Depression.

 

Sullivan's Travels

I have ordered Sullivan's Travels to watch as it was partly the inspiration behind O Brother, will let you know how it goes!!!!

Ideas!

I have definitely decided to work on O Brother, Where art Thou?, it is the film i enjoyed the most and i really like the visual aesthetic of de-saturated colours and the yellowy tint to the film.  I also loved the soundtrack and the story!

So time to get the creative juices flowing.......
Beards!!!!  inspired from the Soggy Bottom Boys dodgy disguises, a possible idea for my set making patterns with lots of fake beards?

Bluegrass music...to create an image reflecting lyrics from some bluegrass music ie..Bill Munroe's Girl in the blue velvet band, Put my little shoes away, and Travellin soldier by the Dixie Chicks


Images definitely need to be sepia toned and/or de-saturated.


Landscapes with a fashion shoot style portrait.


Straw, for the colour and the reference to the barn dance aesthetic.

Look at Homer's Odyssey, try and get the cartoon version lol and watch Sulivan's Travels.

O Brother, Where art Thou?

This film whilst drawing inspiration from Homer's The Odyssey did not srart out that way.. It was only as the character of Ulysses Evert McGill developed to trying to find his way home that it was drawn on, albeit loosely.  The Coen brothers admitted to only having read the comic book version of Homer's Odyssey which explains alot about the film!
The film was also influenced by the Preston Sturges movie Sullivan's Travels, this shows in the depression era setting and in the relevance to the time in Sullivan's Travels that the main character spends on a prison farm.  The influence also shows in the title.
The film was shot on location in Mississippi where the foliage was green and lush, in contrast to the feel that the brothers wanted for the film.  So they experimented with bleaching techniques and diluting colour neg with black and white print to try and achieve the look they wanted.  But this did not work.  The film Pleasantville proved to be a great turning point  in the making of O Brother.  It was made and the film was digitally re-worked to give some of the film black and white sections.  The suggestion was put to the brothers to try digitally reworking O Brother and they really like the results.  The manipulation was kept to a minimum though with just the green's and the overall saturation being played with.


British journalist Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian....." O brother has brio, wit and style and the whole pictureis air-cushioned with appealing comedy and its own unassuming nature.......it is made with marvellous clarity and fluency and Joel and Ethan Coen attain a comic simplicity that other film-makers can only dream of" (The Guardian 15/9/2000)

Fargo

Minneapolis car salesman Jerry Lundegaard is in money trouble and hires a couple of criminals to kidnap his wife, in the hope that his father-in-law Wade will put up the ransom money and he can pocket half of it.  It decends into a frace when the two criminals are stopped by a policeman and they kill him and two other witnesses.
When the local police cheif Marge Gunderson follows the trail of the murders back to the car showroom Jerry's friend, who put him in touch with the two criminals, gets angry and beats up Carl one of the two kidnappers.
Carl then shoots Wade when he turns up with the raqnsom money for his daughter.  But Carl's plan to escape with the bulk of the ransom money backfires and he ends up being fed into a wood chipper by his associate.  The film concludes with Gaear (the other kidnapper) being arrested and Jerry is also arrested while on the run in North Dakota.


The film has obvious visual reference to Psycho with Jean (Jerry's wife) being found in a bathroom and the shower curtain  The popping off the rings echoes the murder of Janet Leigh.  It also references A Clockwork Orange with the dialogue......"Just in town on business.  Just in and out.  Just a little of the old in and out."  The old in and out was a euphemism ofr sex in A Clockwork Orange.


All of Fargo was shot on  location with the exception of the two small bathroom sets, and as the film is supposed to have an aesthetic of a true story it was mostly shoit where the events allegedly took place.


I really enjoyed this film.  I found the narrative both funny and chilling.  The musical score  reflected the action well.  While i felt the snow added the feeling of film noir.  The vioence was justified and added to the story rather than being gratuitous.  The characters were believeable and it was easy to become emotionally entrenched in this movie, with my allegiance changing throughout the film from Jean to Marge to Jerry who despite being the intial protagonist ends up as the victim.

Raising Arizona

Armed robber Hi McDonnaugh is repeatedly caught, imprisoned and released, every time he is caught his mugshot is taken by the same policewoman Edwinna, who he subsequently marries.
Having been turned down for adoption because of Hi's criminal record, they kidnap a local entrepeneurs son.  From here events decend into chaos with Hi punching his boss for suggesting wife swapping, steraling napppies and his marriage on the rocks.
 A biker Leonard Smalls sees the reward for the baby but Hi's friends Gale and Evelle kidnap the baby first with view to collecting the reward but then decide to keep him.
Hi and Ed eventually get the baby back and are forgiven by the baby's father when they give him back.

I found that I did not connect with the characters in this film, I had no emotional investment in the film and found that the story did not connect with the issues surrounding it.
I did find that the opening montage set the scene really well thoough and gave me an initial insight into the two main characters.

This film was the brothers second offering and contrasted starkly with BLOOD SIMPLE.  It is lighter and funnier in contrast to the darkness in BLood Simple.  This shows the pattern throughout the brothers films that each one is completely different to the last.

Joel and Ethan Coen

The Coen brothers write, produce and direct all their own films so the amount of control they have over them is extensive.

They came onto the film scene in 1984 with their debut film BLOOD SIMPLE which premiered at the New York Film Festival.

One critic said of it "Boy do the Coen brothers have style.  Amplified chunks of face are shoved up close to our dumbstruck gaze, prosiac household objects are given the fisheye and magically attain ominous connotations that mean anything in particular......"  Elliot Stein in Film Comment 1984.
(50 Contemporary Film Makers - Edited by Yvonne Tasker 2002 Routledge London pg 110)
He said this despite observing that the audience "cheered themselves hoarse".

Their films often show a farcical look at the violence present in everyday US culture and show original social commentary that is evident despite irony and the cheekiness within the films.

The Coen brothers especially satirize people like themselves.  For example the characters in Fargo are stupid simply they come from the Upper Mid-west.  In Barton Fink there are caustic Jewish stereotypes.

There are many themes running through the brothers films as well as the stupidness of people, they use voice-over extensively and dream sequences figure prominently as well.

Time to update the research!!!

I have been an awful bit busy over the summer period but have managed to do a bit of research so am finally going to add it all here instead of keeping it my notebook!!!!

Editing

Trying to get that sepia/yellowy tone of the film that I like so much I have played with a few images....

Troubles?

I have been struggling to find inspiration and locations based on BARTON FINK, but there seems to be any number of possible locations for O, Brother!!!
Here are a few more images from my travels............

A successful day

Had a great day out location hunting :), big thanks to Eileen and Chris for keeping me company....a few of the best ones......

Inspiration

Going out tomorrow to try and find some inspiring locations for this project, I am focusing on O Brother and Barton Fink, and am off out to Burrator Resevoir :).  I have 3 other locations that I will be investigating over the weekend.
Here some stills from O brother that I would like to look at.............

 

Barton Fink

I am beginning to realise that all Coen bros films are a little off the wall!!!

Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a movie studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie, the insurance salesman who lives next door at the run-down Hotel Earle.

The Coens wrote the screenplay in three weeks while experiencing difficulty during the writing of another film, Miller's Crossing. Soon after Miller's Crossing was finished, the Coens began filming Barton Fink, which had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1991. In a rare sweep, it won the Palme D'or prize, as well as awards for Best Director and Best Actor (Turturro). Although it was celebrated almost universally by critics and nominated for three Academy Awards, the movie grossed only $6,000,000 at the box office – two-thirds of its estimated budget.

The process of writing and the culture of entertainment production are two prominent themes of Barton Fink. The world of Hollywood is contrasted with that of Broadway, and the film analyzes superficial distinctions between High Culture and low culture. Other themes in the film include fascism and WW2; slavery and conditions of labor in creative industries; and how intellectuals relate to "the common man". Because of its diverse elements, Barton Fink has defied efforts at genre classification. It has been variously referred to as  film noir, a horror, and a buddy film.

After a slow start I really got into this film and the Hotel Earle is a prime candidate for set building projects with it's peeling wallpaper and countless shoes outside of countless doors.  It reminded me of a cross between The Shining and Fawlty Towers!!

Definitely one to look at furthere I think.

Oh Brother! Where art thou?

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 adventure comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey.

Literally  LOVE this film!!!!!  Clooney and Co. are hysterically funny as the bumbling heroes of the piece, caught up in a catalogue of errors as they evade capture after escaping from a chain gang.  Everything that can go wrong, does, including being beaten up by a bible salesman for their money, and one of there number being turned into a frog (not really but they really do believe it for a time!)  But on the way they also manage to make a hit record and end up being pardoned by the governor.

The story is hysterically funny, but also touching at times (when you realise that the whole thing has been concoted by Clooney to stop his wife marrying someone else), and the de-saturated colours lend themselves really well to the feeling of nostalgia and give the film a timeless feel.

Waiting

Managed to find a stack of films on Amazon for £12, am waiting for them to arrive then I'm going to have a marathon movie week next week :D

Burn After Reading

Burn after Reading, starring John Malkovich, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins.  Realeased in 2008 it features John Malkovich as CIA analyst Osbourne Cox who, faced with a demotion decides to quit and write his memoirs instead.  The ensuing tale of deception by just about everyone in the story is at times hilariously funny, and at others shockingly graphic.

For me the highlight of the film is Brad Pitt's ingenious portrayal of the himbo Chad, and I was genuinely shocked when he was shot in the head hiding in Cox's wardrobe by the decidedly dodgy Harry Pfarrere (George Clooney).  I honestly thought it was like a dream sequence with Chad envisioning what would happen if he was caught......but it wasn't.

I began this film thinking for the first 20 minutes that it was wierd and I was never going to enjoy it, but I was surprisingly engaged throughout and really got into it.

Wonder if Dave Kinney would let me build The Chair for part of my set building!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

The inner workings of an Art student's Mind?

Hi and welcome to my blog about the Coen Brothers films.  I will post here after watching each film to let you know my thoughts about them!!!! Why, I hear you ask????  Because at college we are going to be building sets inspired by a chosen Coen Brothers film.....that's why!